WMO: ‘The Super El Niño is accelerating climate change’

ANTALYA (TURKEY) – A ‘super El Niño’ has been added to the long series of extreme weather events, which are occurring with increasing frequency: according to calculations by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), this year will see the most intense El Niño ever recorded. In the report presented on Monday 9th, on the first day of the World Climate Change Conference in Antalya, the WMO forecasts that El Niño will persist until February, causing abnormally warm Pacific waters. This cyclical phenomenon has the power to alter temperatures and rainfall, and influences the likelihood of events such as droughts, floods and heatwaves.

Last summer, prolonged periods of record-breaking temperatures left in their wake extensive economic damage and tens of thousands of deaths. On 26 August, a glacier collapse in Nepal triggered a flood that killed over 1,450 people, with thousands more still missing.

“We are seeing an intensification of weather phenomena, and El Niño will act as a risk multiplier,” said Celeste Saulo, Secretary-General of the WMO.

Oxford Economics has attempted to estimate the impact of the Super Niño on the economy and warns that it could reduce global GDP by 0.6 per cent in 2027 and by 0.8 per cent in 2028, with losses totalling around 4,000 billion dollars between the end of 2026 and 2031. Two-thirds of these losses are concentrated in China, India, Pakistan and South-East Asia, whilst African economies are expected to see the largest average rise in consumer prices. For most advanced economies, however, the impacts would be limited, though not negligible.

According to WMO forecasts, El Niño will cause global temperatures to rise by a further 0.1–0.2 degrees, helping to make 2026 one of the hottest years on record. And perhaps the hottest ever. A few days ago, the European climate service Copernicus stated that the increase will once again exceed the pre-industrial average by 1.5 degrees, as was already the case in 2024, the record-breaking year – at least so far. Even in the period between 2023 and 2026, global warming will exceed that threshold, making a structural overshoot increasingly imminent, possibly as early as within this decade. The Paris Agreement recommends keeping the temperature rise below that level to avoid the most serious consequences. But this target is already out of reach: according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), emissions would need to be cut three times more than is achievable under current policies.